Top-level domain

What controls are needed for the next generation of domain names?

by .Nxt | 24 Apr 2013 |

ICANN opens comment period on government recommendations

Do we need greater controls on the companies that will be providing the next generation of Internet addresses?

That's the question that DNS oversight organization ICANN would like to hear you answer in a public comment period open now until 4 June.

Donuts passes background check

by .Nxt | 19 Apr 2013 |

Decision by new gTLD panel sparks flurry of letters

The largest applicant for new Internet extensions, Donuts, has successfully passed a background check, removing a question over its eligibility.

In the latest release of initial evaluations from the new gTLD program's evaluators, five applications from Donuts (out of 307) and one from United TLD have passed, seemingly putting an end to claims they should be disqualified under cybersquatting rules.

ICANN Beijing: Update on the ATRT

by .Nxt | 6 Apr 2013 |

It's only the most important ICANN process you've never heard of

"ICANN is reviewing itself to death. So it would be nice to know why the current review process doesn't work."

There is a certain irony in the fact that ICANN Board member Chris Disspain was asking this of the organization's lead review team - the Accountability and Transparency Review Team, or ATRT.

Disspain is right though, as he often is when it comes to identifying the problems, many self-inflicted, that ICANN faces. He went on to identify a number of other structural and cultural issues, as well as spot where the organization had actually improved in the past year.

Stumbling in the wrong direction

by Kieren McCarthy | 3 Apr 2013 |

ICANN needs to get back to its technical mission before it does real damage to the Internet

It wasn't that long ago - in the days before new gTLDs took up every waking moment of its life - that the most frequent concern expressed about ICANN was "mission creep".

ICANN was set up to administrate the Internet's naming and numbering system, but continually found itself unwillingly pulled into other issues from trademark protection to market regulation, to privacy and legal enforcement concerns.

WhatBox? chooses auctioneer for dot-menu domains

by Kieren McCarthy | 4 Mar 2013 |

Announcement marks start of a busy year and changing industry

WhatBox? has announced it will use a joint collaboration of NameJet and Afternic to auction domain names under its dot-menu gTLD.

The announcement marks what will soon be an explosion in efforts to sell "premium" domain names to the highest bidder as well as encourage large businesses to register domains under certain extensions.

Atallah responds to industry anger over ICANN contract changes

by Kieren McCarthy | 27 Feb 2013 |

If you have a better solution to the issue, let's hear it

Atallah: Surprised at the strong reaction to suggested contract changes.

ICANN COO Akram Atallah has responded to a wave of angry responses from the DNS industry over proposed changes to new registry contracts by asking it to "step up to the plate" and provide solutions to real problems.

Over 30 responses arrived on the last day of a public comment period on the revised contract, most of them highly critical. Key groups within the organization accused the organization of imposing top-down solutions, that the proposal contained "serious and fundamental flaws" and the revisions amounted to "nothing more than a power grab by ICANN staff".

ICANN publishes gTLD contention sets

by .Nxt | 26 Feb 2013 |

And sets the world asleep

ICANN has published "contention sets" for the 1,930 applications for new Internet extensions it has received - and left the Internet community wondering what the fuss was all about.

Of all the possible combinations and permutations of names that could be taken to be similar, only four applications that are not exact matches have been chosen: dot-hotels and dot-hoteis; and dot-unicorn and dot-unicom.

Apart from those four, ICANN says there are 230 contention sets of exact matches i.e. people applying for the same name, and 754 applications involved in total - reflecting the infographic we produced back in June 2012 when the applications were first announced (the only difference being that one of the dot-swiss bids has withdrawn).

DNS industry turns on ICANN over proposed contract changes

by .Nxt | 26 Feb 2013 |

Last minute flood of angry responses to new gTLD comment period

The domain name industry has responded angrily to an attempt by oversight organization ICANN to make last-minute changes to a contract covering new Internet extensions.

On the last day of a 21-day public comment period over the proposed changes, ICANN received 31 responses (40 in total). Most significant among them were joint letters from stakeholder groups within the organization all of which were highly critical of proposed changes to the registry contract for new gTLDs.

"Brand Registry Group" letter to ICANN re: PIC spec

Position Paper: Comments on the revised TLD Registry Agreement

Executive summary

The Brand Registry Group – in formation (BRG) makes the following requests in this paper:

a) Extend the deadline for comments until 31 March 2013
b) Create a type 2 Brand Registry Agreement template
c) Establish direct BRG – ICANN dialogue on the detail required to create a Brand Registry Agreement template.

Preliminary Comments

These comments are preliminary. The Brand Registry Group – in formation requests a delay of 30 days ending 31 March 2013 to the deadline for this comment period.

Need for a type 2 Brand Registry Agreement

The proposed Registry Agreement (RA) was written based on the historical experience that top-level domains (TLDs) were of the .com model, sold via Registrars at the second-level to millions of Registrants. This model is unfit-for-purpose for around 637 or 33% of the applications received as these applications are for future top-level domain registry operators:

who are the owners of a company or brand that forms their applied for TLD

Chartis withdraws new gTLD application

by Kieren McCarthy | 23 Feb 2013 |

And why that's good news for the DNS industry

Insurance company Chartis is the latest company to withdrawal from a namesake new Internet extension (dot-chartis), claiming back $130,000 of its $185,000 application fee.

The news comes just days after the new gTLD program run by ICANN was dealt a blow with the withdrawal of five applications from General Motors (the car industry has embraced the program) and with toy-maker Hasbro dropping its dot-transformers application, despite having a savvy Net audience thanks to recent blockbuster movies featuring the camouflaging robots.

In the case of Chartis, however, the withdrawal - and recent changes announced to its application - are good news for the program since they highlight the far greater importance that new gTLDs are going to have in the global economy starting next year.

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